Wine Experience Cafe

I spent two hours on my dinner — and the whole time I was there, I was the only one there. I was half convinced that the next morning I'd find an e-mail in my inbox: "Sad to say, Wine Experience Cafe is no more..." But that's not quite the way things worked out.

Me, on the following Friday night: "Reservations? Are you kidding me? How long is the wait?"

The host assured me it wouldn't be too long, just a few minutes, maybe twenty. But I looked around that room — fully committed, or very close, and two-deep at the bar — and knew that these people were camping. No one was going anywhere for a good, long while. Apparently, my solo meal had been a fluke, a quirk of timing and traffic flow. And the desperate tap-dancing of the floor staff? Shock more than anything else: They just didn't know what to do with an empty room.

I returned on Saturday night, arriving late, post-crush. Franklin was in the slot again, standing center post on the line, sweating. Even at nine o'clock, there were tables just being seated — a lot of couples, spaced out by eight- and ten-tops that choked the floor. The room is comfortable, casual, with brick and leather banquettes, a fireplace, simple bistro decor. Some people bring their kids here. Others drop hundreds of bucks on a bottle of wine. It's a uniquely Western construct of neighborhood restaurants: upscale casual, something that only we can do well, or at all.

I started with a sizzler of Littleneck clams, fatty discs of chorizo and fingerling potatoes cut in rounds, all swimming in a garlic and lemon broth with sticks of thyme. It was pure pleasure, comfort squared even on a night that was hot as balls. I went through three plates of bread just to get all the sauce — and my server, laughing, was more than happy to oblige.

My entree — duck breast in a Chianti-cherry reduction with haricots verts and assorted greenery — wasn't quite as successful. Saturday night, under the gun, the grillardin (my little buddy from the last time through) either had his grill cranked too high or had been fighting fat fires all night. The quadrillage on my duck was excellent — a perfect crosshatching of grill marks, no doubt precise to the micron — but burned in there like my duck had said something nasty about his mother. It was charcoal, third-degree burns and then a little extra just for vengeance's sake. And the sauce, in a strange and inexplicable departure from Franklin's "Don't screw with the food" nouvelle ethos, was completely overpowering. Not just sour, but bitter — and mean, to boot. And the veggies were undercooked, which pretty much gave the kitchen a fuck-up trifecta. The only saving grace to the entire plate was a mascarpone polenta that was just dreamy, creamy and wonderful. I scraped up every bite like a starving man with no other options and then tried to hide the duck in my napkin.

Feeling generous (and confused by the near-complete failure of my main), I re-ordered, making some excuse about my appetite and asking for the Kurobuta pork loin. It, too, was grilled. It, too, showed faultless control on the grill. It, too, was burnt savagely, but saved by its own merit: Kurobuta is so good, it's virtually indestructible. You could drag it through a puddle under the lowboy, give it ten minutes in the microwave and then serve it under a Kilimanjaro of salt, and it would still taste wonderful. But the delicious romesco potatoes were no accident, dressed in a romesco sauce that actually tasted like a romesco — hot, but spiked with notes of citrus and herbal sweetness — and studded with good chorizo and split black olives that gave them a nice, astringent bite.

By the time I was done, I'd overstayed closing time by a half-hour — and I wasn't the only one. The restaurant was still half full, even as the staff was stripping tables and having brief drinks at the bar. While I'd once watched people afraid to come in, now it seemed as though they were afraid to leave. One more glass of wine, one more bite of dessert (wild-berry bread pudding for me). In the kitchen, Franklin stood with his arms folded, overseeing the floor while his crew knocked out last orders and first breakdowns behind him. He looked pleased, confident, comfortable. He'd been a lifer at 240 Union — a decade-plus behind him. Here in the exurbs, he's still new, with not even a year under his belt. But he's got the magic, that sense of complete command and control. I don't think he needs to worry too much about the place closing around him.

And neither do I.